


A Salve for Your Wounds

by fiacresgirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Nanda Parbat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 18:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiacresgirl/pseuds/fiacresgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first piece of fanfiction. Nanda Parbat after 3x20. Felicity copes with her new surroundings and Oliver's dark mood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Salve for Your Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> None of these characters are mine. They belong to Arrow, the CW, Warner Brothers, DC.

Felicity was worried about Oliver. What was new? Today was a day that ended in -y. But today - whatever today was, she’d lost track of time when she’d boarded the Palmer Industries jet in Starling City and everything here in the Underworld was surreal - she was _really_ worried about him. He was tense, terse. He stalked about even in their small room. He was training constantly, and she’d heard rumors that he’d put a few men - Felicity didn’t know what to call them, assassins? - in the infirmary as a result of last night’s skirmishes. 

He wasn’t talking. He wasn’t sleeping. He was only kind of eating, although she couldn’t blame him for that. The food here was...unusual. Small portions featuring unusual meats, odd smelling cheeses, flat breads, dried fruits instead of fresh ones, and wine with every meal including breakfast. The coffee was a horror show - thick sludge in tiny cups drunk only in ritual and not, as it was meant to be, first thing in the morning and then all day while working. Felicity wasn’t eating much either, but she wasn’t so worried about her health. She wasn’t the one waking up every five minutes all night long gasping and then wincing. 

Obviously the stress of the last few days, including Thea’s death, Oliver’s ritual branding and induction into the League, and the Lazarus Pit resurrection, was aggravating Oliver’s PTSD. She knew the signs; she’d read up on them shortly after she joined Team Arrow. She had a Google alert set for when any news related to it came out. Under normal circumstances, Oliver’s coping mechanisms were not what Felicity would call ideal. He didn’t talk to anyone about his history, he didn’t lean on his friends and family during difficult moments, he didn’t have a counselor, and he didn’t have hobbies. Instead he exercised religiously, very occasionally meditated, and brooded all of the time. Thank God he didn’t drink. She sometimes wondered _why_ he didn’t drink. No doubt there was some reason. He didn’t talk about it. Of course he didn’t. 

She watched him pacing about the room, “Oliver, can you sit down for a sec? You’ll wear a hole in the rug.” He looked up and frowned at her. “What?”

“I know you’re worried, but your constant stalking about is making me nervous. More nervous. And that’s saying something. Sit down next to me?” She patted the opulent, overstuffed bed and gave him her best smile. “Let me check your wound.” Oliver stopped, looked at her, and shook his head. “It’s fine. You checked it this morning.” But then he sat down beside her, shrugged out of his leather overjacket and pulled the linen shirt he was wearing underneath out of his breeches and up over his shoulder. 

Felicity stared at the red, swollen flesh surrounding the arrow the League had seared into his right shoulder. It looked better today. It was no longer oozing and was beginning to scab in an encouraging way. She leaned over, grabbed the small pot of salve that the infirmary attendant had given to her off a side table, opened it, and gently smoothed some more on his damaged skin. The burn would pull the oil in almost immediately, she knew from three days and nights’ experience. 

“There,” she said. “It’s looking less inflamed. That’s a good sign.” And then she pressed her cheek to his other shoulder against the dragon’s head there and wrapped her arms around his chest, pulling him to her. His body was rigid, but not from pain, she knew. This _particular_ wound was healing. The others, not so much. The loss of Thea, of Starling City, of his Arrow identity and his mission, of any sort of semblance of control over his life - those were still bleeding and would for a long time. Ra’s al Ghul had taken them all in a few strokes and forced the man, Oliver, her kind, heartbroken hero, into a new name and black assassin’s hood. Al Saheem. 

It didn’t matter to Felicity that Al Saheem was the _Heir to the Demon_. She wasn’t impressed with the title or the title it was subordinate to. Ra’s was frightening, yes, _very_. And it was obvious that to all of the people in Nanda Parbat that all this was a big fracking deal. If Oliver could demand the obedience of every man, save one, in this place, he was the equivalent of a prince, and this showed in his interactions with the people here: the soldiers, the staff, and the assortment of hangers on filling up this strange desert palace. They deferred to him, waited on him, and took orders from him. 

Felicity was used to Oliver being a big deal, though. He’d been a Queen, a billionaire, and her boss, and none of that ever stopped her from seeing what he was inside, and it certainly hadn’t stopped him from seeing her. It didn’t stop him from seeing her now, even if he was fighting his reaction to her. She had to do something about that - for his sake and her own. 

Slowly she kissed Oliver’s shoulder and then pulled herself up on her knees so she could reach his neck and pulled his linen shirt over his head and threw it on the floor. The she snaked her right arm over his shoulder to avoid any contact with his burn and clasped her hands together over his collarbone. She held on, skin to skin, and breathed in and out with him. Breathed in. Breathed out. Her chest pressed up against his back, willing him to feel connected with her. 

“I think I’ve got their surveillance system almost figured out,” she said quietly. “It’s not very technologically advanced. How could it be with this place? The mics are actually embedded in the stone, so they’d be a bear to update. I think I can disable them, at least part of the time. Which would mean we could have some _privacy_.” 

Oliver gave a tiny jerk when her breath brushed his ear, but he said nothing. 

“The cameras we’ll still have to cover and uncover, but we’ll be able to talk,” she said. “And, you know, do other things without this turning into Arrow, the Porno.” He tensed a bit at that, and she regretted opening with this. Ra’s has supplied his Al Saheem with luxurious surroundings and allowed Felicity to remain here with him, but the whole suite was bugged, and Oliver wasn’t happy that touching her meant exposing them to the League, either figuratively or specifically to whatever dude was monitoring those files. 

Felicity wasn’t too crazy about this either. She’d lived her whole life in such a way that, in addition to certain other life goals, nudes would never surface. With her background and her ambitions, she needed to make sure people would take her seriously. There were no snapped pics of her flashing her tits on top of a bar table, and no one had anything to blackmail her with on a cellphone. She’d made sure of that. But now in some Nanda Parbat closet there were some explicit audio files, at least. Probably pretty loud ones. She hoped they were only audio files. They’d thrown scarves over the video cams, and moved a couple of ornamental screens around, and so far no one had said anything. Was that a good sign?

“Grumpy took me outside today, after lunch,” she said. Before this she hadn’t been anywhere except for these rooms, her originally assigned room, a dining area, the place with the Lazarus Pit, and the maze of corridors. “There’s a courtyard. It’s nice. There are palm trees and all of these cute little lizards darting about a huge fountain. I didn’t see Dig. Or Thea. Do you know how they are?” 

“Dig’s fine,” Oliver said. “Thea is...recovering.” Felicity would have loved to ask him to elaborate, to tell her what effect the Pit had had on Thea, and was she really alive and _all there_ , but she knew he wouldn’t. Not right now. 

“When Dopey came on his shift, he brought me my laptop,” she said, “It was wiped, but I can get those files back, don’t worry. Down in the dining hall, they have wi-fi. I Skyped with my mom. I told her I was out of the country with you and there’s nothing to worry about if she doesn’t hear from me. That’s at least half true.” Felicity sat back down on the bed and scooched over to face him. The expression on his face told her he was still somewhere else, somewhere unpleasant. She took his hand and pushed her fingers between his, then she reached up, cupped his chin, and looked him in the eyes directly.

“Oliver, you can’t shut me out. You know that, right? You can try, but I’m already in there. With you. So you may as well tell me what’s going on, why you walked out of here this morning at least somewhat relaxed and came back tonight tight as a bowstring.” 

Oliver stared into her eyes for a full minute and then sighed deeply. He covered their entwined hands with his other one. “He’s going to force you to leave,” he said quietly.

“Who? Ra’s?” she asked.

“Yes. There’s no place for you, Dig, or Thea here among this army, and he believes you interfere with my preparation.”

“When?”

“Soon. Sometime in the next few days. There won’t be any notice. You’ll just be gone,” he said. 

“He can’t do that,” she said.

“He _can_ ,” Oliver said. “I can’t stop him. I may be “the Heir,” but the reality is I’m just an apprentice here, surrounded by an army of assassins. I have no leverage, and you know what he already did to Thea when I defied him. I should never have brought you here. In a way, he’s right. The three of you are a weakness. He threatens you, and I’ll do whatever he wants.”

“Oliver, you didn’t bring me here. I _chose_ to come here. I got Ray to lend us his jet. I know it’s a habit with you to take responsibility for absolutely everything, but I’m here because I want to be. Because I need to be. Because I can’t be where _you aren’t_. And he can’t make me leave.” 

“Felicity…”

“I mean, yes, he can physically remove me from Nanda Parbat, but no matter what he does, I won’t be gone from you. You know that, right? I’m in there.” She gave him her hardest stare. His blue eyes were so sad. 

“All of this, from the beginning...you came back from Lian Yu that first time, and you were like a block of wood. Your face was like a sculpture. A gorgeous sculpture,” she smiled up at him tenderly, “but still. 

“You let no one in. And yet I saw you. You smiled at me, and I saw you in there. And I knew you’d killed people with arrows and probably a dozen other ways, and I looked at you, and I didn’t even care. Not really. It didn’t keep me up at night. Somehow I _knew_ you.”

She pulled her hand from his and placed it on his chest, tracing the outline of the star there, the Sun Brotherhood. “This thing here. You’ve been a mobster. You’ve been an assassin. A vigilante. A frat boy, a playboy, your parents’ disappointment, Thea’s flaky brother, the CEO of a failing company. And now you’re Al-Saheem. But none of that matters. You’re _Oliver_ to me, and you’ve got such a noble, loving heart. And such a capable mind and body. You have friends who care about you and will not abandon you. And no matter what Ra’s decides to do, you will not be alone. I’m a part of you.” She pointed at his heart. “You _don’t forget_.”

Oliver’s eyes softened and grew moist, and he slowly shook his head. 

“Whatever happens, it won’t be forever. We’ll figure it out. We always do. Ra’s has an army, but we do too, Oliver. You still think you’re the lone wolf, surviving out there on your island by luck and wits, but you ignore all of the people you’ve touched and helped. How can you not remember them? Your plus column is not empty - it’s full! Do you think Barry and Cisco and Caitlin and Laurel and Dig and Roy and Thea and I - hell, even Ray - are going to leave you in this mess and let Ra’s siphon off your soul? Because,” and she punched this out on his chest, “it. Will. Not. Happen.” 

“Oliver.” His eyes were now downcast. He was so stubborn. She dragged her finger up past his collarbone and traced the vein in his neck, narrowing her eyes. She was going to have to go for the jugular. 

“I need you,” she said. “Don’t close yourself off. Whatever time we have left right now, I want it. I have to have it. I need all of you to be here with all of me because that’s what will give me the strength to get through this. 

“Please, she whispered, “please.” For one more minute, he didn’t move, and then slowly, slowly he relaxed. Breathing out, he lifted his hand to her face and gently caressed her cheek. He leaned in and kissed her mouth, and it was gentle and then passionate and finally a bit desperate. He ended it slowly, with a last tender kiss, and then traced her mouth with his thumb. 

“Thank you,” he said, and she knew it wasn’t for the salve, it wasn’t for the kiss, and it wasn’t for the speech. It was for everything.


End file.
